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No, it’s not. It’s better than Hitler. Just stop it.
I’ve had my sunglasses on, prepared for this moment. Sure, all the bright light’s and sounds buzzing for the debut of iPhone 3G has finally won over first-timers, and tempted many early-adopters into upgraders.
But not this guy. No thanks.
So let’s cover the basics: it’s plastic, it’s faster (which is very subjective), and it has GPS.
And?
While great for those who haven’t been able to enjoy the touch screen splendor, us grounded folks are fine with what we have. Sexy-gun metal back, comparable EDGE network speeds (it’s a cell phone: let’s be realistic here). And, what’s great is Steve Jobs and co. haven’t left us in the dark.
Firmware update 2.0 rolled out over the past couple days, introducing a slew of new features to non-upgraders, Gen 1-sustainers. While they do not transform your phone completely, the latest and greatest offerings from Apple certainly will change your experience significantly enough, so that those 3G’rs don’t leave us feeling cheated.
Push-email (getting your e-mail updated as they come in, versus timed updates) makes keeping up with correspondance simpler and more organized. For the workaholics out there, iPhone 2.0 now accepts Microsoft Exchange accounts, allowing to check work emails while trying to relax during the weekends. Blah, it’s there, use it if you need to. And, when trying to get delete all those pesky e-mails you have been so carefully trying to avoid, users can now multi-trash messages, rather than the painful one-by-one method the earlier system has adopted.
Email aside, the biggest addition, and probably the only one really worth mentioning, is the App Store, providing applications created by developers world-wide. To iPhone Jailbreakers, this isn’t the latest and greatest under the sun. But this official introduction’s fixes the jailbreak battery drain, which came from applications continuing to run and use power, even though they technically aren’t in use. Jobs alluded to this in the iPhone 3G keynote earlier this summer, and seems to have made good on it.
Downloading applications doesn’t necessarily require a wi-fi connection that the iPhone iTunes store does, but you certainly do benefit from being able to download and install apps at a much faster rate. You can read more about the finer workings of the App Store at Apple’s official site.
Apple really does offer an application for almost everything and anyone, and does feature a decent amount of free apps. While I have only partook in the freebies, there were a few relatively cheap apps, such as a complete NY Subway System listing, that I will most likely purchase.
Also, not to downplay my own critique, but Gizmodo live-blogged their app testing, which, of course, puts mine to shame.
So far, my free favorites are:
- Remote : allows users to control their iTunes library wirelessly over their home network. The response time is super quick, and displays just as if I were playing music on my phone:
- Save Benjis: a great app for those who like to price match ANYTHING. Say you’re in Best Buy, and you’re not totally convinced they have the best deal on that LCDTV you have eye on. Save Benjis’ easy to use search by keyword (and for even more specific terms, search by Barcode!) blankets the web for the product, and lists out prices the competitors offer. Certainly going to be using this gem in a few weeks. Samsung LCD here I come!
- PageOnce :pulls in almost any online account, social network, and email you may have. You can view your upcoming cell phone bill, update your Twitter, while you make another business connection on LinkedIn. I love being able to access all my credit card debt that is crushing my financial future all at once!
- Facebook: Not bad-mouthing the very-sleek web app that rolled out last summer, but the new officially iPhone integrated Facebook app allows much easier browsing in a semi-familiar setting. The app lets users utilize the new Facebook chat feature, which actually will run simutaniously while signed on with a computer, and also separate Inbox messaging. Anyone with an iPhone can attest to the annoying “Post” button that’s wedged in too tight.
- Midomi: one of my top favorite amongst the group, mostly because it subtly tells Chris Cornell and Verizon’s V-Cast Song-ID service that they DO NOT STOP RUNNING AT THE MOVIES to kindly suck it. Midomi IDs a song based on your own humming and singing, and finds that song that you don’t know, but is stuck in your head. Plus, it blends in a social network aspect, by allowing users to create profiles and showcase their own humming and singing tracks. Try and find my singing. It’s the one that sounds like a cat getting a Brazilian waxing.
[iPhone image via Four Starters] [Remote image via CNET Asia] [Wireless News]
Ever since they put this on their cover:
I’ve been less and less inclined to reading Rolling Stone, the once biblical reference book for everything good in music, turned popular culture watchdog. I forgave them for their attempt at pseudo-credible journalist reality show “I’m From Rolling Stone”, but this was crossing the line.
Still, with Coldplay’s Chris Martin gracing the cover this month, complimenting a wonderful Q&A interview written by Brian Hiatt, there was some redemption. Furthermore, what really surprised me was the secondary cover story, which involved 24-year-old Facebook impresario Mark Zuckerberg, detailing the lonely road and many burned bridges traveled on his path in creating the now 6th most visited site on the internet.
I suppose with any relatively new product that hits it big (although calling the company’s $15 billion value big is a gross understatement), many want their share of the pie. Still, I wasn’t aware of the actual amount of smashed toes and cold shoulders were turned in turning a once dorm-room business into a worldwide phenomenon (my MOM is on Facebook, which, sadly, automatically drops a few cool points in its favor).
Three former associates of Zuckerberg’s allege he lifted the idea off their initial preliminary planning for multi-college social network, now called ConnectU (which has gone the way of the Friendster, for the most part). Meanwhile, another claims he created “thefacebook.com” before Zuckerberg did, despite it not picking up speed and inevitably went under.
Here’s what they had to say about the Facebook “creator”:
“We got royally screwed,” Divya Narendra, one of the students, has testified. And in April, another classmate, Aaron Greenspan, filed a petition to cancel Facebook’s trademark, claiming he invented an online facebook months before Zuckerberg. Greenspan, who has compiled reams of e-mails chronicling his months of communication with Zuckerberg, bristles at equating the Facebook prodigy with Microsoft’s founder. “Gates was shrewd, calculating and insanely competitive, bordering on autistic,” Greenspan writes in his self-published autobiography. “Mark was inarticulate and naive.”
Still, aren’t most geniuses not without their character flaws? Without his otherwise awkward mannerisms, would Facebook have even existed?
I think it’s just a full-blown case of playa hatin’. Fellas, the game waits up for nobody! And Zuckerberg demonstrates that with every step he takes in getting his product everywhere.
Anycrap, decide for yourself here, and check out his 60-Minute interview after the jump.
Part of the beauty of Facebook is that it enables you to pretend to be friends with people you may have gone to grade school with but lost touch with, or friends of an ex, or random geeks you may or may not have encountered during a drunken or, if you prefer (as I do), drug-induced haze.
In fact, the argument that the Web-created buffer zone is one of the only strong features of Facebook — the Kim Kardashian’s ass of social networking, if you will – is probably a valid one. After all, it’s a lot easier to blow someone off online than it is face-to-face.
Or so one might think.
But no, apparently the general population’s need to pretend to like people has managed to seep into online social networking, resulting in awkward situations that can follow an individual around all day until they think of a savvy enough response to habitual poking or out-of-the-blue conversation.
Isn’t that right, Paul Majendie?
Should you reject a friend on MySpace? How do you ward off an old lover on Facebook?
Have no fear. Britain’s etiquette bible has come to the rescue for social networkers who are at a loss about how to behave with online decorum.
Debrett’s have helped to compile a new set of “golden rules” for devotees of sites like Facebook and Bebo.
I have found myself, yet again, losing faith in humanity. And surprise, surprise, it’s because of something I’ve found on Facebook!
Members of the popular social-networking community believe that oil industry giant Exxon will be giving away one free gallon of gasoline for its patrons on June 1st, in an effort to give a little something back to the community it has been so accustomed to raping. An online event allegedly hosted by the gas powerhouse has found its way to 6,410 Facebook profiles. However, those eagerly clicking too fast to save that $4.00 may be setting themselves up for disappointment, as further investigation into the event shows the event creator as Rutgers student Luis Piloto, who apparently is a professional cabinet surfer, when not committing crimes of e-douche-baggery:
This display of Facebook deception that screams, “I have no friends” isn’t the most troubling finding. What comes as the biggest shock is that as of 8:10 PM today, over 2,000 users of Facebook have RSVP’d to the event’s invitation, a movement so mind-numbingly sad, that is only rivaled by the droves camping out for Harry Potter books. I’ve come up with two explanations. Either our fellow Facebook’ers have become so devoid of reality that they will believe anything that only requires them to single mouse click (let’s face it: a double click would be asking much). Or, out of some backfiring fluke of technology, the 2,000+ user count lost power to their scroll wheel usage SIMUTANIOUSLY!
Which ever the case may be, it’s clear to see that progressive online movements on Facebook, such as “I will donate imaginary money to Darfur“, or “Bringing Sexy Back“, will never die. No matter how badly we may want them to.
After the jump, read some of my favorite talking points found from the event’s discussion wall:
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